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2002 (Side A): Bullet Garden/Prologue 1—The Movie-Loving Businessmen
Synopsis In August 2002, somewhere in South America, thirteen businessmen and businesswomen discuss movies and movie stars over lunch in a destroyed restaurant, insouciant despite the bloody corpses littering the floor. Their conversation briefly turns toward their plan to hijack a luxury cruise liner with just thirty hijackers in total, though they soon move on from comparing their plan to movie plots to likening the restaurant's current atmosphere to the opening of Reservoir Dogs. One of the businessmen casually requests the opinion of a tall, brown-skinned man standing behind him—and beside forty other local residents brandishing knives, guns, and hand-axes, the men themselves having silently encircled the businessmen's table. The tall man asks if the businessmen are responsible for the scattered corpses—implied to be his late comrades—and grows all the more cold once he assumes they are indeed to blame—though the talkative businessman insists the deceased were the ones who first picked a fight. However, he does admit that the group happened to be his group's target—at least, their boss was their target. Angered, the tall man invites the businessmen to "come on a little picnic," with an accompanying tacit implication that his men will move to kill if the group refuses. The businessman wonders why the second group did not try to do so already via a sniper or bomb, and is told that their sniper and demolition expert are taking a siesta. Concluding that the tall man is likely not the boss of the mostly decimated group, the talkative businessman admits that neither he nor his fellow dozen comrades personally killed the deceased people—and in the same breath he calls for Illness and Death to "sow themselves" upon the second group. Illness and Death swing down on ropes from southeast and northwest holes in the ceiling and mow the forty-odd men down in a hail of bullets. The blood and smell of powder promptly cause Illness to throw up, much to the businessmen's consternation, and they proceed to have a verbal back-and-forth in which they berate Illness' character and she retorts back. None of the businessmen have a bad word to say about Death in comparison, whose professionalism, skill, and deadly aura make him the deadliest of their 'Four Great Weapons'. The talkative businessman finally suggests they either leave before the police arrive or wait to ask if the police know where the boss of the decimated drug cartel might be. Seconds later, bullet rips through Death's mouth and shatters the back of his skull. Trivia Cultural References * The following movies: Speed; Speed 2: Cruise Control; The Boondock Saints; Spider-Man(2002); Platoon; Shadow of the Vampire; Nosferatu (1922); Reservoir Dogs; and Tomb Raider (2001). * "Willem Dafoe" (American actor) * "Sandra Bullock" (American actress) * "Nicholas Cage" (American actor) * "Dennis Hopper" (American actor) * "Christopher Walken" (American actor) * "Steve Buscemi" (American actor) * "Japanese Sentai shows": Sentai refers to military unit(s). In the prologue, one of the Businesswomen refers to Steve Buscemi's performance as "Mr. Pink" in Reservoir Dogs, and her colleague asks if she is thinking of "one of those Japanese sentai shows." In this case, the colleague is referring to various Super Sentai series in which color-coded superheroes battle forces of evil. Characters in Order of Appearance * The Businessmen * Illness * Death Quotes Category:Light Novel Chapters